Register For Virgin America’s Feel The Earn Promotion

Virgin America’s Elevate program has come out with a fairly lucrative promotion valid for travel between October 6 and December 19, 2014. Registration is required prior to your first travel date, though previously booked travel does also qualify for the promotion.

Triple points for First Class and double points for Main Cabin Select

Virgin America Elevate members ordinarily earn five points per dollar spent on Virgin America, so through this promotion you earn 10 points per dollar spent on Main Cabin Select tickets (fare classes W, Q, and Z), and 15 points per dollar spent on First Class tickets (fare classes J, C, and D). The flight has to be marketed and operated by Virgin America to qualify, and the bonus is based on your original fare class — in other words, an upgrade day of departure wouldn’t qualify for the bonus.

For those of you not familiar with Elevate, it’s a revenue based frequent flyer program, meaning the cost of an award ticket is based directly on the cost of a revenue ticket. Each Elevate point can be redeemed for roughly 2.2 cents towards the cost of a Virgin America ticket. That means through this promotion you’re earning a return of ~22% on Main Cabin Select tickets, and ~33% on First Class tickets. That’s a huge bonus.

There’s no limit on the number of bonus points you can earn.

Virgin America First Class

Also earn up to 25,000 bonus points

On top of that, Virgin America is offering threshold bonuses based on how many total qualifying points you earn for Virgin America flights between October 6 and December 19, 2014 (this applies for all cabins, including Main Cabin).

The thresholds are as follows:

To clarify, qualifying points in this instance are the same as base points, meaning it’s based on the earnings rate of five points per dollar.

In other words:

Spend $500 pre-tax and earn 1,000 bonus points (worth ~$22)

Spend $1,000 pre-tax and earn 2,500 bonus points (worth ~$55)

Spend $2,000 pre-tax and earn 5,000 bonus points (worth ~$110)

Spend $3,000 pre-tax and earn 10,000 bonus points (worth ~220)

Spend $4,000 pre-tax and earn 15,000 bonus points (worth ~$330)

Spend $5,000 pre-tax and earn 25,000 bonus points (worth ~$550)

25,000 points are worth roughly $550, so that’s an additional ~10% return on you spend if you max out the promotion.

Put another way, if you spent $5,000 on First Class tickets between now and December 19 you’d earn a total of 100,000 Elevate points — that’s worth roughly $2,200 in Virgin America travel. That’s a huge bonus.

Bottom line

While I don’t usually get excited about revenue based frequent flyer programs, this is an extremely lucrative promotion. If I were a Virgin America flyer I’d be doing the happy dance right now. If I spent a lot on flights and/or booked premium domestic tickets and weren’t especially loyal to the legacy carriers I’d also probably switch some flights over this promotion.

What do you think of Virgin America’s Feel The Earn promotion? Do you plan on taking advantage of it?

I'll have the full details tomorrow, but ouch. My flight was originally scheduled for 12:20AM, and is now scheduled to depart at 1:30PM. Not sure what's worse: -- A delay that long -- That they didn't even spell the name of the destination city correctly…

Delta is making huge changes to the SkyMiles program in 2015, on both the earning and redemption side. On the earning side, redeemable miles will be awarded based on how much your ticket costs as opposed to how many miles you fly, and SkyMiles is getting…

More from One Mile at a Time

I reviewed Virgin America's first class product between Newark and Los Angeles a few months ago, so I'll keep this review shorter, as I just want to touch on a few aspects of the Virgin America experience. This time around I was flying a midcon rather…

It's not often that I take domestic trips for the purposes of reviews, though this one was an exception. On Wednesday and Thursday I spent about 30 hours flying what ordinarily wouldn't be a very exciting routing. However, it allowed me to review American's…

While Alaska's takeover of Virgin America formally closed last December, the two airlines are still operating separately until 2019, when Alaska plans on retiring the Virgin America brand. Reciprocal benefits for frequent flyers on either airline have…

Reader Nick emailed to share an experience he had on yesterday's Virgin Atlantic flight from London to Boston. There are lots of reasons for flights to be delayed and diverted, but this is one of the most unusual I've heard. Yesterday's flight VS11 from…

Alaska's takeover of Virgin America formally closed late last year, though the two airlines are taking their time when it comes to streamlining the experience across the two airlines. When the merger first closed, the only real reciprocity between the…

Earlier I wrote about the great stackable Amex Offers for Hilton purchases, which can potentially earn you 3,500 bonus Amex points plus a $50 statement credit after spending $300 at a US Hilton property. When you combine that with Hilton's current promotions…

About luckyBen Schlappig (aka Lucky) is a travel consultant, blogger, and avid points collector. He travels about 400,000 miles a year, primarily using miles and points to fund his first class experiences. He chronicles his adventures, along with industry news, here at One Mile At A Time.

For people not yet signed up with Virgin America’s Elevate FF program, you can also take advantage of their new member bonus promo and get 500 points for joining and an additional 2,500-7,500 points for taking a flight before 31 December 2014.

The fine print says “for flights booked & travelled b/t 10/6 – 12/19”. I purchased 2 refundable main cabin select just last week. I’m wondering, should I cancel the tickets & repurchase them or do you think those flights would qualify me for those extra points?

I am trying to change my status from Elevate Silver to Elevate Gold.
However, I still need to earn 24,000 Points to accomplish this.
How much do I need to spend on a First Class ticket on this FeelTheEarn promo?
Your help would be greatly appreciated to help me figure this out! Thanks!

@ Brian Kessler — Frankly if you’re that far away with only two weeks left in the year, I’d say it’s probably better to stick with Silver and go for it next year. You’d need to do a LOT of flying to get to Gold.

Recent Trip Reports

My flight to Los Angeles was departing from gate 38, which is a bit of a haul from the Flagship Lounge. This required taking the underground tunnel to the far American concourse. I left the lounge at around 7:15PM, in anticipation of the 7:30PM boarding…

In late May American opened their new Flagship Lounge in New York, with greatly expanded access requirements. However, the most revolutionary thing about the lounge wasn't the space as such, but rather one of the features inside the lounge. Specifically,…

American is in the process of revamping their international lounge experience, including creating new Flagship Lounges. American's Flagship Lounges used to just be open to international first class and oneworld Emerald passengers, while now they're also…

With my flight from Los Angeles landing at around 11:30PM, and me needing to head to the airport the next morning before 6AM, I just looked for the most basic hotel that would earn me points and stay credits with either Hyatt or Starwood. Many airport…

Recent Posts

My flight to Los Angeles was departing from gate 38, which is a bit of a haul from the Flagship Lounge. This required taking the underground tunnel to the far American concourse. I left the lounge at around 7:15PM, in anticipation of the 7:30PM boarding…

Hawaii is a hugely popular tourist destination from Japan, and the number of daily flights between the sets of islands is staggering. For example, just between Tokyo and Honolulu there are flights by ANA, China Airlines, Delta, JAL, Korean Air, and United.…

Six days after Hurricane Maria, the destruction in Puerto Rico is nearing a humanitarian crisis. Most of the island is still without power, which means people can't use credit cards (or get cash) to buy supplies, and even those who were prepared with…

Delta was the first global US airline to introduce a revenue requirement for status, award miles based on dollars spent rather than distance flown, etc. However, they've also once in a while made some positive changes, and have areas where they're especially…

About Lucky

Ben Schlappig (aka Lucky) is a travel consultant, blogger, and avid points collector. He travels about 400,000 miles a year, primarily using miles and points to fund his first class experiences. He chronicles his adventures, along with industry news, here at One Mile At A Time.

Meet The Team

One Mile at a Time is owned by PointsPros, Inc. This site is for entertainment purposes only. The owner of this site is not an investment advisor, financial planner, nor legal or tax professional and articles here are of an opinion and general nature and should not be relied upon for individual circumstances.

Advertiser Disclosure: Some links to credit cards and other products on this website will earn an affiliate commission. Outside of banner ads published through the Boarding Area network, this compensation does not impact how and where products appear on this site. While we do try to list all the best miles and points deals, the site does not include all card companies or credit card offers available in the marketplace. Please view our advertising policy page for additional details about our partners.

Editorial Disclosure: The editorial content on this page is not provided by any entity mentioned herein. Opinions expressed here are the author's alone, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities.